Bank Accounts

The Transactions item in the main menu is designed to facilitate the creation, management, and viewing of banks and bank accounts, as well as to review transactions linked to them.

To view and manage bank accounts:

Go to the "Transactions" section from the main menu.
A list of all created bank accounts, along with their details, will be displayed. Available actions:
Edit Accounts: Click the "Edit" button next to an account to update its details. Editing is available to administrators.
View Transactions: Click the "Transaction" button next to an account to view the transaction list linked to that specific account.
Hide or Unhide: Select Hide to put away an account you no longer use, or Unhide on a hidden one to bring it back. Available to anyone who manages banks — see Hiding an account.
Delete: Select Delete to remove an account for good. Available to administrators only — see Deleting an account.

An account created from this list must be given a bank. The bank is required on the new-account form, and the form cannot be saved until a bank is chosen, whatever the account type, cash included. When there is no bank to choose yet, the form says There are no banks to choose from yet. and links to Add a bank. An account opened from a bank's own row already belongs to that bank, so the form does not ask.

This list holds every account, whether or not it belongs to a bank. Accounts that have no bank show a dash in the Bank column. Editing one keeps the bank optional, so it can still be saved, and it can be given a bank there. Such an account is edited, hidden and deleted from here — the Manage Banks page lists accounts underneath their bank, so an account that belongs to none appears on it nowhere.

Show hidden accounts:

Hidden accounts are left out of the list by default.
While at least one account is hidden, a Visibility filter appears at the top of the list. Choose All accounts (N hidden) to list the hidden ones too; each is marked with a crossed-out eye icon and offers Unhide.

An own account your transactions quote but nobody registered

Bank lines often name the organisation's own account on the other side of a transfer, for example a VAT account or a second current account. When they quote one of your own accounts that is not registered in Flowtly, a warning above the list says Unregistered own account found. It shows the account masked to its last four digits, explains that until the account is registered, transfers to and from it count as ordinary payments, and says how many transactions quote it.

Register opens the usual new-account form with the number and the suggested type already filled in. Give the account a name, choose its bank and its currency and confirm. Nothing is registered until you do, and once the account is saved the warning goes away.
Not our account dismisses a candidate that is not yours, so it is not offered again.
The number of transactions is a link to the transactions that quote the account, shown as a removable Selected lines filter on the list. When those transactions sit on more than one of your accounts, the warning adds Open them on: with one link per account.

The warning is shown to people with the Banks manager or Transactions manager role; the link to the transactions only to those who can open an account's transaction list. Both actions are unavailable while your subscription blocks changes.

Each account number can only be added once

An account number belongs to one account. If you try to add a second account using a number your organisation already holds, Flowtly declines and names the account that has it, so you can go straight there instead of creating a copy.

The check ignores formatting. 28 1140 2004 0000 3402 8485 2191 and 28114020040000340284852191 are the same number, so spacing, dashes or capital letters will not get a second copy past it. Hidden accounts count too — a number held by a hidden account is still taken.

This is worth knowing because a duplicate is hard to spot once it exists. Where two accounts share a number, an imported bank feed can land on the one you are not looking at, and the transactions are saved correctly while none of them appear on the account you opened. Refusing the second account is what keeps that from happening.

If you are renaming or editing an account that already has a twin, you can still save your change — the check only objects when a number is new to that account.

To manage banks and their associated accounts:

Click the "Manage Banks" button at the top of the Transactions page.
This redirects you to the Banks Management page, displaying all existing banks.
If a bank has multiple accounts, they are displayed as child elements under the respective bank. Available actions:
Add New Banks: Use the "Add Bank" button to create a new bank.
Edit Existing Banks: Click the "Edit" button next to a bank or its accounts to modify details.
Add New Account: Use the "Add account" button to create a new account to specific bank.

Add New Bank

To add a new bank, follow these steps:

Select "Transactions" item from the main menu.
Click on "Manage Banks" at the top of the page.
Click "Add Bank" in the top right corner.
In the form that appears, provide the Bank Name and Swift number.
Click "Save".

Created Bank is added to the list.

Add Account to the Bank

To add an account to an existing bank, follow these steps:

Click on the dedicated button located on the right side of the bank's row.
In the appeared form, provide the following information:
- Account Name
- Prefix
- Account Number
- Currency
- Type (can be regular or VAT)

You can mark the account as default if applicable. Additionally, you can mark account as hidden, this way it won't be shown in the Transactions item unless All accounts is chosen in the Visibility filter. Hiding also withdraws the account's transactions from the rest of the application — see Hiding an account below.

Note: To make currencies available in the selector, configure them under "Currencies" in the General Settings menu.

Note: The Account Number is what an imported bank statement is matched against. An account left without an account number is never matched to an uploaded statement file, so statements for it have to be assigned by hand. Fill the account number in for every account you intend to import statements into.

After creation, the account will appear as a child element of the bank on the Manage Banks page and in the Bank Accounts list.

What counts as a valid account number

For an account type that requires a number, the number must be 8 to 34 letters and digits, with at least 8 of them digits. Spaces, dots and hyphens between groups are allowed, so a number written in groups is accepted. They are removed when the number is saved, whether the account is being created or edited, so the stored number is the bare letters and digits. Text such as NOT-A-NUMBER-!!! or a short value such as 123 is declined with a message on the field.

Flowtly checks the format only, not the IBAN check digits, so a number that is well formed but not a real IBAN is still accepted. The same rule applies when you change the number on an existing account. An account whose stored number does not meet it, for example one with fewer than 8 digits or with a slash, can still be edited, hidden or renamed: the format is checked only when the number itself is changed.

This matters because the number is what an imported statement is matched against: an account with a malformed number never matches its statement file.

Importing MT940 statements

When a statement file is uploaded, every transaction amount in it must be written as digits with one decimal comma, for example 84,09, 84, or 0,00. If any amount in the file is malformed — a lone comma, a second comma, or no comma at all — Flowtly refuses the whole file and saves none of it, rather than importing the good lines and recording the bad one as a wrong amount. Correct the amount in the file and upload it again.

For statements from BPS, the transaction type is stored in full (for example NTRF), not cut to its first letter.

Editing an existing account

Currency and Type are fixed once an account has them. They set how the amounts already recorded against the account are read, so changing either one afterwards would reinterpret the account's history; the two fields are shown but cannot be edited.

An account saved without a currency or a type is the exception: the empty field stays editable, so you can fill it in and save. Everything else about the account — its name, prefix and account number — remains editable either way.

Two ways to retire an account

An account you no longer work with can be disposed of in two different ways, and the row offers them as two separate controls because they are not variations of one another:

Hide withdraws the account and its transactions from view while keeping every record. It can be undone at any time.
Delete removes the account, its transactions and its stored statement files for good. It cannot be undone.

Reach for Hide unless you specifically need the records gone. It is the answer to almost every reason an account stops being used — the bank relationship ended, the account was closed, the statements were imported into the wrong place — and it leaves the history intact for audits and for closed budget periods.

Hiding an account

Hiding is the way to retire an account you no longer work with while keeping what it recorded. It goes further than tidying the account picker: a hidden account's transactions stop being served anywhere in the application.

Select Hide on the account's row. The confirmation states what will happen: the account and its transactions stop being shown everywhere, budget totals included, nothing is deleted, and it can be unhidden at any time.

While an account is hidden:

Its transactions do not appear in the transaction list or the balance chart, and they are not returned by filters or searches over transactions.
They are not counted in budget figures. A transaction on a hidden account is left out of budget summaries, cost tables and budget totals, including a transaction that was linked to a budget by hand before the account was hidden.
A budget line backed by a hidden account's transaction is excluded rather than shown as an empty row.

Nothing is deleted. The transactions stay in your data exactly as they were; they are only withheld from view and from calculation. Clear the Hidden mark on the account and every one of those transactions is served again, with budget figures returning to what they were. Unhide on the account's row in the Transactions list does the same in one click.

Two consequences are worth knowing before you hide an account:

Budget totals that included the account will change, including totals for months that are already closed. If a budget figure has moved and you cannot account for it, check whether an account feeding that budget has been hidden.
Hiding is about the whole account, not about one transaction. To leave a single movement out of a budget, unlink that transaction from the budget instead.

To find accounts that are currently hidden, choose All accounts in the Visibility filter at the top of the Transactions page. Hidden accounts are marked with a crossed-out eye icon, and Unhide on the row brings one back. The filter is offered only while at least one account is hidden.

Deleting an account

Delete is the irreversible disposal. It permanently removes the account, all of its transactions, and the statement files stored against it. There is no archive and no recycle bin, and the records cannot be recovered afterwards.

Because of that, deleting is deliberately harder than hiding:

Delete is restricted to administrators. Someone who manages banks and accounts can hide an account but is not offered the delete control at all.
The confirmation names what is destroyed — the transactions and the stored statement files — and states that it cannot be undone. It also points out that hiding is available if you only want the account out of the way.
You must type the account's name into the confirmation before the delete can be accepted. Clicking through it is not possible, so a near-miss on the wrong row cannot destroy an account.

When a delete is refused

Flowtly refuses to delete an account whose records are still relied on elsewhere, rather than removing them and letting the figures that depended on them fall over. When that happens the confirmation stays open and states what is holding the account and how many — for example that its transactions carry a number of budget links.

That message is the useful part of the refusal: it tells you exactly what to unpick if you genuinely intend to delete the account. Resolve what it names and try again, or hide the account instead.

Deleting is also offered for an account that is already hidden — hiding first and deleting later is a reasonable sequence, and on the Manage Banks page a hidden account shows only the delete control, since it is already hidden. On the Transactions list it shows Unhide and Delete.

Prefer hiding when in doubt. A hidden account can always be brought back; a deleted one cannot. If an account was removed and its transactions still appear somewhere, it was hidden rather than deleted — and the reverse matters more: once a delete goes through, no trace of those transactions remains to be found later.

Example use cases

A financial controller needs to review all incoming and outgoing transactions across various company bank accounts to reconcile ledgers.
An accountant wants to add a new corporate bank account recently opened to track its transactions within Flowtly.
A finance manager wants to quickly identify a specific bank account to check its current status or associated transactions.
A user retires a closed bank account by hiding it, so that its transactions stop appearing in transaction lists and stop counting towards budgets, while the records themselves are kept.
A finance manager finds a budget total lower than expected and switches the Visibility filter to All accounts to see whether an account feeding that budget has been hidden.
An administrator permanently deletes an account created by mistake, along with the statement wrongly imported into it, so that none of its transactions remain queryable.
An administrator attempts a delete, reads the refusal naming how many budget links the account's transactions carry, and hides the account instead.